iOS is a secure platform, offering a lot of functionality and more. Today, Apple has updated its App Store Review Guidelines in order to prevent developers from creating and uploading anti-virus and malware scanning apps to the iOS App Store. As we have mentioned earlier, iOS is walled, which means no virus can seep in or have an effect on the firmware. Henceforth, it makes sense for the company to update the App Store Guidelines, preventing developers to upload any anti-virus or malware type of applications. So let’s dive in to see some more details on the subject.

Even though Apple strictly disallowed developers to upload any malware or anti-virus apps, they keep doing so, if not directly, then they would offer the functionality as one of the many features in the app. In addition to this, some lesser-known iOS users fall victim to the notion that their iOS might have malware. While Apple does remove these apps, some of them make it to the list of top chart apps on the iOS App Store.

Similarly, you should not market your app on the App Store or offline as including content or services that it does not actually offer (e.g. iOS-based virus and malware scanners). Egregious or repeated behavior is grounds for removal from the Developer Program. We work hard to make the App Store a trustworthy ecosystem and expect our app developers to follow suit; if you’re dishonest, we don’t want to do business with you.

Apart from these App Store Guidelines, Apple also made it clear to users that developers should make sure that the ARKit implementation in their apps should provide a rich and immersive experience. By the sound of it, Apple wants the advanced implementation of the ARKit, instead of just putting animations into replay or adding AR objects on a location.

Apps using ARKit should provide rich and integrated augmented reality experiences; merely dropping a model into an AR view or replaying animation is not enough.

In addition to this, we can finally conclude that the Face ID feature on the forthcoming new iPhone X would not be available for kids under 13 years of age. Henceforth, they should implement an alternative method to authenticate users who fall under the category.

This is it for now, folks. What are your thoughts on the tweaked App Store Guidelines? Share your views in the comments.